Garrett's Big Birthday

The day Garrett has been waiting for ALL month finally arrived and what a day it was. He woke up and got dressed before anyone else even thought about getting out of bed. Party time (4:00) just couldn't come fast enough! All day he asked if it was time yet, and once he could tell we were getting tired of that question, he started asking if he could open his gifts from us at home and the rest at the party. Little stinkerbutt! :) His request was a Spiderman party this year and that is just what he got. (His mother was feeling a little guilty for being such a slacker last year!) We had it at our local pizza place and he was able to invite three of his friends in addition to all the aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins that would be there. We ended up with a pretty full party room and everyone seemed to have a great time. I know we did! He came home one spoiled little six year old!

Couponing...

So...there's not much going on in our little household these days. Someday I'll blog about our adventurous New Year's weekend, but not right now. It had it's highs and lows, but the lows are not enough of a distant memory just yet. :)
For now you get to hear about one of my new hobbies....couponing. I've always enjoyed getting a good deal on things I want, but it's slowly becoming a new obsession for me. Our year's supply is nowhere near where it should be and my plan is to start stocking up even more on the sales. By being smart with coupons and sales, my plan is to bulk up our supply, and meet our current needs on the same budget. I want to include stocking up on medicines and other household items as well, not just food. As far as household supplies go, Rite Aid is the best as far as couponing around here. I spent a good part of the afternoon trying to figure out how to get the best deals at Rite Aid this week. Now that I look at the picture it really looks kind of lame, but I was pretty excited about my deals and thought if I blogged about them it might give me extra incentive to keep going with it. Especially considering that most of those individual things cost more than I actually ended up paying for the whole.
After $20 worth of coupons I spent $16.22, and will be getting $10.99 back in rebates (which I've already submitted online) for a total of $5.23!

Christmas Day '09

We had a wonderful Christmas this year. We got up Christmas morning and headed to Roger and Velvet's to open gifts with everyone. That evening we headed over to party with the Cox side. Our kids were spoiled this year as usual and so were we. We feel so blessed to have been able to spend so much time with our families.

Ella loving on her new stuffed bear.

Garrett opening his new Didj. It has kept him pretty occupied this last week.

Ella and her music table.

Lauren opening the accessories to her new play kitchen.

The kids "helping" pass out presents. :)

Opening gifts at Grandma Kappel's house.

Christmas Eve '09

On Christmas Eve we always head to my Grandma Cole's home for dinner and the reading of the nativity story from the Bible. This year Grandma decided she wanted her younger grandchildren and great-grandchildren to act it out as it was read and she put my sister-in-law, Jaycie, in charge of bringing it all together. Jaycie did a great job, and so did the kids. Garrett was once again a wise-man, and Lauren was an angel (an angel with a kool-aid stained face apparently :))

After that, we headed back to Todd's parent's home for some family time there. The kids got to open matching PJ's from Grandma and Grandpa.

and of course get a picture...

The all important silly one!

Ella turns 1!

Even though she looks about half that age, our sweetie turned 1 on the 15th of December. I'm learning quickly how hard it is to fit a birthday in with all the holiday festivities. Ella's birthday was in the middle of the week, so we decided to let her open one present and celebrate that weekend. Here she is opening her little gift. She was pretty entertained for a while, and so were her siblings...

The next Sunday, we had cake and presents at her Grandma and Grandpa Chamberlain's house with some of the family. Ella LOVED her slice of cake and had lots of fun.

Earlier that day...we were all downstairs and all the sudden realized we were missing Ella. Todd immediately went to the stairs and this is what he found. Part of me was a little freaked out that she could have easily rolled down the stairs from this position, but it was too cute so I had to get a picture first! :0)

The new things she is up to these days....

*She's finally taking some interest in walking, but it's still on her terms. She'll take steps between Todd and I at times. If we encourage her enough she get's pretty excited and will do it for a while, until she gets TOO excited and can't stay upright.

*She has a new like for Mega Blocks. She takes them apart and tries so hard to put them back together.

*She's figuring out the whole shaking her head yes and no thing. Most of the time she gets it right, but she still gets confused.

*She's jabbering more and more to try to figure out that voice of hers. She says mama on a more regular basis now, instead of just when she gets mad that I'm ignoring her.

She is such a joy to this family, and such a good kid even though she's fighting double ear infections right now. If she wasn't running a fever I would never know she's sick, she is such a good baby, but then I feel guilty that she just kinda suffers in silence. I don't know what I'd do without this little sweetie to brighten my days.

Garrett's school Christmas Concert

This year we got to attend our first school Christmas Concert for Garrett. For weeks, I would hear him playing in his room and singing the songs to himself. It was stinkin' cute. Garrett looked so nervous up there, but he did great. I hear he did even BETTER (as in, quite animated) the second performance, which we unfortunately missed. Lauren even tried to make an appearance onstage, but luckily we caught her before she made it up there. The rest of the program she begged to go up there. I just hope she's that willing when she's in school. The night before the program Garrett mentioned that we could come to his classroom afterward for cookies, and we made sure we did. He was SO excited to show us where they were. I love sharing all these firsts with our little man even though it reminds me of how quickly he's growing up.